SEO and AI Integration

In this episode of Mondays Down Under, Lee and Shane discuss various aspects of running a business in the pool service industry, focusing on the importance of SEO, the evolving role of AI, and strategies for maximizing online presence. They share insights on how to effectively use social media marketing, the significance of customer reviews, and the potential of AI in streamlining business operations. The conversation also touches on the balance between AI and human interaction, emphasizing the need for personal connections in customer service.

takeaways

• AI is evolving, and businesses must adapt to stay relevant.
• SEO is not outdated, but it is changing with technology.
• Google prioritizes active businesses with updated information.
• Social media marketing can be scheduled and automated.
• AI can assist in customer support and troubleshooting.
• Creating processes can help streamline business operations.
• Investing time in AI can yield long-term benefits.
• Personal connections in business are still crucial.
• Virtual assistants can help manage workloads effectively.
• AI can enhance customer interactions without replacing human touch.

Sound Bites

• "AI can help lighten your load."
• "AI can be extremely helpful."
• "You can create your AI clone."

Chapters

00:00
Introduction and Super Bowl Talk

03:27
Business Warrant of Fitness and SEO Discussion

05:56
The Evolution of SEO and AI Integration

08:42
AI's Role in Business Marketing and Scheduling

11:49
AI in Customer Service and Technical Support

17:37
Creating AI Clones and Their Applications

22:58
The Future of AI in Business Operations

BufferZone
BufferZone has been created by a frustrated pool maintenance company

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:53

You really want to make sure that you're at the top of the list, whether it be on Google or Bing, search engines from that perspective or from AI. And how do we go about that? Well, it's about keeping things current.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

BufferZone Systems are the pool and spa industry specialists with a complete range of software for pool shops, service companies, and commercial aquatic facilities. With more features and integrations than any other pool industry software, you really need to reach out for a one-on-one demonstration. Contact BufferZone today.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Hey Shane, how are you?

SPEAKER_04 1:52

Very good, Lee. Living the dream, thank you for asking. Just come off a long weekend. Another one. Refreshed. Yes. People who are the show are like Jesus Christ, they're on a lot of holidays, don't they?

SPEAKER_02 2:05

So I'm thinking I'm thinking you you New Zealanders are constantly on public holidays. So I do happen to know we're recording this on the 9th of February. But I'm seeing all over the news today that the Super Bowl is happening in the US. That seems to come around really fast. Or maybe it's just the ears are going flying by. I don't know. But I actually started to think that they were having two Super Bowls a year, and I actually had to Google it and find out how often the um Super Bowl was held. And it said annually, so clearly the ears are going a bit fast for my liking. But anyway, sorry. Anything interesting this week? Just doing the same old poll shuffle.

SPEAKER_04 2:51

Same old Lee, same old, same old. But uh we have recently had our business. Um how it does the business has had a WAF. So over here, I don't know if you call it a WAF in Australia. U O F a warrant of fitness. It's usually a term that your vehicle would get on an annual basis, six months, depending on what the age of the vehicle is. I don't know why what do you call it in Australia?

SPEAKER_02 3:22

I think every state calls it something different, but in New South Wales we call it a pink slip because the piece of paper that it comes on is pink. It's a registration check to make sure that your vehicle is roadworthy and in good condition uh before the state allows you to re-register it for for the year. So is that something similar to what you're referring to?

SPEAKER_04 3:45

It is, yeah, yeah. I think a WAF sounds a little bit better than the pink slip.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

It does. It does, but I've never heard of one being done for a business, so that sounds really interesting.

SPEAKER_04 3:54

No, it's um something new. It's it's friends, it's friends of a friend. Basically, there's a few of them, they own different businesses, all to do with well, one of them is social media, one is SEO and website, another one is video testimonials, and there's two others, but they're all kind of IT-related, review-related, customer service related. So basically, we we sat down, Sammy and myself, we sat down when I'm out of coffee. They had a list of I think it was about 25 questions, and basically they they just want to know your business as much as they can inside out, and they go away, have a group meeting with themselves with all the questions and the answers, and then they provide a warrant of fitness report for your business, for your website, etc. We were actually there first to do this, it was quite exciting for them as well. We were the guinea pigs, and uh yeah, it was it was very good actually. They come back with a very detailed report, areas where they see us doing well, areas where we're doing okay, and areas where we should definitely focus on. But depending on what our goals are for the business as well, everything all entwines with each other. One of the big points which come up was SEO S E O or our websites in the business in general, and um we're due to have a catch-up with the SEO professional, and I'm assuming he's an AI professional now, the way the world is going. But we we had a chat with somebody a couple of days ago, and they were saying SEO is it's kind of an outdated thing now, everything's moving towards AI, which we need to have a chat with him about as well, and just see basically how SEL is still impacting businesses, how businesses are still find that found on the internet by using SEO, whether or not AI is just dominating absolutely everything at the end of the day. But before we started recording, I actually used AI, as we all do. Um, and I did type in, is SEL outdated? Now AI is here, and it actually this is using Gemini, which is Google AI. This is one I prefer to use personally. Um, and it said the short answer is SEO isn't isn't outdated, but an old way of doing it effectively is dead. We move from an era, an era of rank and links to an era of winning citations. So in 2026, SEO is starting to evolve into what many call GEO, which is generative engine optimization. So it's evolving, everything seems to be evolving. If we're not evolving, you know, we're gonna die, we're gonna get stagnant. Um, and especially technology as well. But yeah, it's it's very interesting. I mean, I'm sure for a lot of people that start business, this probably is uh something that they're really familiar with, you know, building a website, putting backlinks in, doing your SEO, constantly updating your Facebook, your social feeds, and it just takes so much time. It really does. And if you don't know what you're doing, it's it could just be a complete waste of time, you know, at the end of the day. So I think getting somebody into actually this is what they do, this is what we're going to focus on. You give them what you want to focus on in your business and how you want to grow your business, and then hopefully they can guide you and do everything in the back end that they need to do to hopefully cruise your business in the right direction.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

Yeah, absolutely. I think it really depends on where you are and your individual market. So you're in a big city here in Auckland, it is the capital city of New Zealand?

SPEAKER_04 8:13

Now Wellington.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Wellington is, okay.

SPEAKER_04 8:16

But a lot of people think Walking is the biggest city.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

But it is it is one of the biggest cities in New Zealand, isn't it? Yeah. And so therefore, there's a lot of competition there. There's a lot of other pool service companies playing in that market. And if you need to stand out in the crowd, if you want to be top of that ranking when it comes to to Google, if someone's Googling and asking for pool service companies, you want to make sure that you're going to be at the top of that list. And now, as you're saying rightfully, people are now going to Chat GPT and they are asking the same question. Hey chat, recommend a pool and sparse service business to look after my pool in Auckland, New Zealand. And lo and behold, it comes up with Liszt. So how does AI get that information? It obviously searches the web. So I think for that matter, SEOs and AI are very interwoven. AI is getting its information from the web, and that information is often provided by searches like Google or Bing or those types of platforms. Obviously, um, like I was saying, depends on your market. If you're a small, if you're a pool and spa service company in a regional space and there's only a couple of businesses servicing that space, then you're always going to come up. But guaranteed, and yes, my business was in one of those locations, if you Googled pool service business in my local area or in my Shire, guaranteed every time you had the big mass operated names come up, like Pool Works and Swimmart and Clark Rubber, they were all sponsored ads. And so you have to weed through all the sponsored ads because I can tell you right now, the nearest one of any of those is about three hours from us. So they're servicing pools in my area.

SPEAKER_04 10:19

That'll be a big haul-A feeling.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Yeah, pretty much. And so yeah, you've got to weed through that sort of stuff. So AI does that for you. They're not going to recommend a business that is not in your local area. So that's awesome. Plus, there's no ads on there yet. So that's another good thing. But um, yeah, you really want to make sure that you're at the top of the list, whether it be on Google or Bing, search engines from that perspective or from AI. And how do we go about that? Well, it's about keeping things current.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

From the land of room and have a lover to we're fixing pools and having a brew. Chemistry, jats, and business yarns, from backyards by two resort lagoons, mate, no dramas.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

You really want to make sure that you're at the top of the list, whether it be on Google or Bing, search engines from that perspective, or from AI. And how do we go about that? Well, it's about keeping things current. So you want to make sure that you're interacting with your website, with your Google business listing. I understand there's other business listings that you can you can do with Apple. There was another one. Bing Places. I don't use Bing myself, but Google Business Profile is one that I used. And I actually they give you a rating. I think they give you like a percentage score for your business, and that's great because it shows you how healthy your interaction has been with your page. Photos. Google loves photos. Reviews, of course. Google absolutely loves reviews, especially their own. Let's face it. And interacting with your profile. So maybe updating your business hours as they change. New Zealand, the land of the public holiday. You could update your operating hours each week that there's a public holiday there. So those sort of things really help your business listing stay top of mind and therefore coming up higher in in the rankings. And AI loves it too because it shows that that page is active, that it's actually that business is alive. It's not a dormant business. God knows how many social media accounts and websites that I've been on looking at pull and spar service businesses, and they haven't updated their Facebook since 2022, or maybe they've done two posts in the last six uh 12 months. That shows that you're or to AI, it shows that you're not active. So then it questions whether you're creditable or reputable, or whether you're even operational, and it's less inclined to put you on the list.

SPEAKER_04 13:34

That is similar to our case lead to tell you the truth. And we find it's about the business. It's it always it will always boil down to time at the end of the day. I was in a stage where I would have time if I was to do a job like a green pool recovery or a lead detection, whatever it may be. If I had the time, I would take the photo and it would be like motorbill photos, spend 15 minutes and then upload it to Instagram and Facebook. But if you find the busier you get, you know, you just don't have time to do it yourself. It's quite difficult if you're a one man on the road, one woman on the road, um, or just with a very small team. But yeah, I think if you've got that advantage, having a retail shop or office staff, whatever it may be, you know, just allocate an hour, even if it's just an hour a week just to keep things fresh and moving, um, you know, on the internet, on the socials, whatever it may be, um, then that's always a fun must for the NDNA.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

Absolutely, it is. AI can actually do a lot of that for you these days. I haven't gone that far into it, I have to admit. I would love to find an AI specialist that we can have on the show that can really impart that wisdom to our listeners. But my understanding is that you can actually get AI to help control your social media posts, answering even social media inquiries, replying on your behalf, all of those sort of things that can really be great and take a load off your plate. But it's about creating processes. I know with my social media, or actually, let's talk about marketing in general here. I actually had a 12-month calendar that I worked by. So my coaching clients get this as part of what I do for them in the pool shop coach. It's actually a very large, it's not A4, it's actually like double A3 pages. It's quite a big poster. And it has all your months of the year down one side and across the top, it has all the different forms of marketing that you want to implement in your business. And it can be everything from printing paper, the paper that you put in the printer. And I know that sounds weird, but I actually used to use paper that I would get from suppliers to put my test results on. And on the back of it was an advert from them. So it might advertise a chemical or an energy efficient pump. So it was a great way of me getting free paper, then getting a free advertisement. But it was a way I used to change them depending on the season or the month or the promo to reflect and carry the message consistently through my business. But a little bit off topic topic there. But social media marketing was one of the things that I had on there. And so I would say what are the topics of conversation for the month, and then I would set about getting a series of photographs from our service technicians. And then I would sit down and I would do it all in one sitting, but you can schedule them. So you could schedule them to go out every day at a certain time, or maybe I actually did things a little bit differently. I had, I think it was um technical Tuesday, wacky pool Wednesday, funny Friday, those sort of days where I would make the information a little bit different. And so some of them were things that weren't relating to the topic of the month. They might have just been a Friday funny that was pool-related in some way, shape, or form. And they're just great ways to interact with the customer. So you can schedule them in advance, very easy to do, doesn't take a lot of time. And remember, it doesn't need to be like you see people doing all these fancy videos and that sort of thing, and people go, Oh, I spent so much time editing. AI can help with all this sort of stuff. There are apps that you can put a picture in and it can make it come to life. You can put a video in and it will edit it for you. It will put captions on it, it can slice up a video and make it a five-day different different reels for each day for five days. So there's so much that it can help with. So don't be scared of AI. Start looking into it and see how it can actually help you to run your business by taking those tasks that maybe you're not skilled in or knowledgeable on or don't have the time for. And it can actually lighten your load, but also improve your business. So there are some great apps out there that can really help with that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 18:30

I'm gonna have to look into them, Lee, I think, straight after this podcast. I think uh I think it's quite exciting, actually. You know, I think AI's what it's been around for what, maybe 12, 18 months, and you can see how fast again it's evolving, and uh just how good it's becoming as well when it's still really early days. I just don't want to take my job just yet.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

Amazing experience the other week. It was, I think it was like 10 or 11 o'clock at night. And I've just implemented a new CRM system for my business. So I can keep a con I can control keep my or some control over my contacts and their information and sending out emails and and whatnot. And so this is something that I'm only just implementing. And I was having trouble with I had two programs that I was trying to get to talk to each other, and in the middle I had to what put what's called a Zap. So people who are technically minded or had gone down this realm of things, there's a program called Zapia, and Zapia can can can connect two programs that don't necessarily normally talk to each other, it creates a connection. So I wanted to get information from one program, which was actually a um an information collection hub in that's in my website, and I wanted to get it to send the information over to my CRM, and I needed to put a zap in the middle, and I could not get it to work. I was following all the instructions. And so I jumped on the chat, you know, the little chat bot that most websites have in the corner, and this was on my CRM system. And so I typed in how like I'm having this problem, how do I fix it? I actually didn't know whether I was talking to a robot, like to a bot or an AI, I should say, or I was talking to a real person. The answers were that good. The giveaway that it was AI was how fast the answers were and how detailed they were. Like there was no way known a human being can type that fast and be that instant. So what actually ended up happening was my problem was not with my CRM, my problem was with the way the Zap was getting the information from the original source material or the source software program. The AI in the CRM system told me how to fix the problem in the other program that wasn't in this. And it's like, oh my lord. Wow, it was amazing. And it was like 11 o'clock at night, and you're not gonna get a help support desk at 11 o'clock at night. Maybe we will because they're in the US and they're awake and we're asleep. But it was it was sensational service, and it then gave me confidence that if I ever have a problem, that bot, that AI, I shouldn't call it a bot because it's way more than a chat bot. It is way more. It it is AI, and I know it's going to be able to help me with my problem. The funny thing was I was actually chatting with somebody in the other program, and they were a real human being because the chat bot there said it would put me through to a service agent, and it actually put me through to the service agent, and that service agent couldn't help me. So in the end, and it was their own program. And in the end, I actually said to the person because they said, like, do you still need are you still there? And I went, thanks very much. I fixed the problem. The AI from the CRM has told me how to fix the program, fix the problem in your program. And she was just, oh my god. I think that was her her reaction as she typed, OMG, I'm so surprised. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, she yeah, I think she was aghast at what had actually happened. I certainly was. I was impressed. I really was. So AI can be extremely helpful. I'm extremely shit scared of it to think of what it could possibly be in the future. But it's damn clever. So I can't see it in pools, but it can certainly educate people on how to do it.

SPEAKER_04 23:09

No, no, maybe not service in pools, but you did mention earlier Lee that there was a very well-known pool equipment company. We don't need to mention their name, but their help desk is fully AI, their help center.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Yes. Now I understand that this is in in the US. I don't know if it's in the Australian market yet, but actually this might give it away. That this company recently withdrew its business from Australia. Not completely, not its products. It's gone into distribution through multiple main distributors that distribute various products, but closed their actual office here in Australia. So they don't have they don't they don't sell their own products, let's say, put it that way. And they were saying um Facebook groups that this particular supplier had their technical support line is a um some people the feedback was that it was extremely helpful, um, seemed to be quite knowledgeable. Others were saying they hated it and they hang up on it as soon as they get it. So I suppose it did depends on how smart the AI is, how well um resourced it is in its library of intelligence, because you need to put the information in. It's like taking your brain and putting it into the computer. Isn't that scary? And then it uses what you've the information you've put into it to spit out the answers. So from a supplier's perspective, I can actually get that that's not too hard to do because they're concentrating on their products, their product range. If they can troubleshoot their own products, then there's a lot of resource there as long as they put all those resources in and they keep adding to it as situations arise. And it's a bit like I I use them in my training and in my coaching. It's like having a flowchart. Is the pump making is is the pump running? Yes, you go this way. No, you go that way. No different than if you had a VA that was answering your phone and the person on the other end of the phone said, My pump's not working, I'd like to book a service technician. Okay, can you give me some information about the pump? It's XYZ brand and it's XYZ model. Okay, now can you tell me what the pump is doing? Well, it's not doing anything. So it's not running, there's no humming noise, there's no nothing. Oh, it's making a humming noise, but it's not pushing the water around. So these are the sort of information that you can put into AI. Just purely, you can do it verbally. You can do it by document. I think you can even do it by video. So it's amazing how you can deliver that information. And then it uses it as its library. You're creating a brain bank, and then you can ask it questions. You can ask it then to write a uh document on please give me instructions on how to operate this pump or how to install this pump, and it would actually write a document on installing that pump or comparing two different pumps. So if you had a customer that was looking at um energy efficient pump from brand A and an energy efficient pump from company B, and you put those two in Chat GPT and you asked it to compare and advise you on the choice of a pump for a pool that is 50,000 litres. Or let's say for our US listeners, 38 uh yeah, 38 gigs.

SPEAKER_04 27:03

10,000 gallons.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

Well, 10,000 gallons is 38,000 litres, isn't it? So let's say 15,000 gallons is probably close to 50,000 litres. So you as the information that chat GPT gives is only as good as the quality of the question that you ask. So if you say to ChatGPT, select me a pump for a 50,000 litre pool, you're giving it very small amount of information. But if you said, Chat GPT, can you please give me uh a suggestion for an energy efficient pump for a 50,000 litre pool that is operating a 26 uh 28-inch sand filter running a salt water chlorinator of 35 grams per hour? It is a high beta load use, it is heated, standardly heated to 28 degrees for six months of the year, and it is in a residential environment. You're giving it a lot of information to work with, and you're going to get a much better quality answer from it. So think about that when you're using Chat GPT. But yeah, there's lots of things you can do that I've barely scratched the surface. I actually did a really interesting course the other week. I had to get up at three o'clock in the morning, three days in a row. It just about killed me. I think I was a dead zombie for the most of the day, each of those days after that. But it was all about creating your clone, your AI clone. And I just did it out of interest because it was something that really interested me. But hell scary. My God. This looks like you, it sounds like you, it talks like you, it sprouts your words because you're putting it this whole program told you how to put your brain into the program. But the frustrating thing is you use Chat GPT for this, you use Claude for that, you use Nano Banana for this, you use Gemini for that. Like it was like eight different programs to get the best results, and I'm going, I don't have the patience for that. So needless to say, I did not make my chat GPT or my I did not make my clone. Will I get around to it? Maybe for some fun. But yeah, it looks like you, you can put it in your own real environment, you can have it walking through a shop. You can it is amazing what you can do. You can even ask it to show yourself pouring salt into a pool while you're chatting to the camera saying blah blah blah blah blah, and you give it the script, and it doesn't. Wow. It is absolutely incredible, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:02

So that's one thing I have noticed about a lot of the AI programs. Even if you were to type the same sentence into different programs, it would come up with different answers, which I was a little bit puzzled on because I would have thought it would have been pulling out information from the same sources.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

Well, I think the thing is it depends on what their preferred source is.

SPEAKER_03 30:28

So right, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Yeah. Whether ChatGPT prefers Google or Bing, whether Claude, I think Claude prefers Gemini. So, and the thing is, all of the different AIs have different strengths and weaknesses. Hence why this program that I did had three different AIs that it was using for three different things. It was using one to write a script, it was using one to create your brain, and it was using another one for I think it was the photo image. They were all had different strengths and weaknesses. So my understanding is Claude is um very good at writing information out. So putting your you put your brain in, literally, and then it spits out very accurate documentation. That's my understanding with that one. And it's also Claude's very good with spreadsheets. But ChatGPT has recently done an upgrade with spreadsheets, and apparently it has really improved. So they're all evolving. And it was interesting you said before about uh we we all need to evolve because, like, if we uh I can't remember the terminology you used, but the one that I always use when I talk about evolving is or or making progress or progressing is you'll get run over even if you're on the right track track, if you just sit there. Because you can be on the right road, you can be on the right train track, you can be going in the right direction, but if you're standing still, you're either going to be overtaken by everybody else or you're gonna be run over and not be relevant anymore. So it's it's important. I'm not saying we want it to replace us, God knows we don't. Um, but how can we use it to best benefit our businesses and ourselves is something that I'm really looking into. And I know Pete, our co-host that's not on the show anymore, he was an avid AI fan and used it quite a lot. Always questioned its, and rightfully so, questioned its accuracy. AI even always says down the bottom that you should check everything that comes out of AI to make sure it's accurate. Obviously, that's their disclaimer. So yeah, don't think it's the be all and end all, but it can be a great source of information and of help. And how can you best use that to help your business? I think we're really only just scratching the surface, but I'll certainly be and I'll keep you all up to date. I'll be diving into that in a bit further in the future because I'm looking for ways of how I can use it to help the businesses that I'm working with, or how I can share that information with them to use in their businesses to help their situations, streamline their processes, create their standard operating procedures, things like that, that takes the load off them, maybe helps them with the scheduling. So I did actually hear that there's um a scheduling program that's available that can actually look. I don't know how far advanced they've got with this, but they can actually look at gaps in your calendar and can take a job that's come in from uh an inquiry online and gone, okay, well, that person is in that particular suburb, you're in that suburb, your schedule has another property or other properties in that suburb on, let's say, Thursday, and you've got room in that schedule, so I'm gonna schedule that job for that day, and it does it automatically, which could be really helpful, but it could also be a pain in the arse because how does AI know how long that job's gonna take?

SPEAKER_03 34:34

True. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

We've all had the case of a five-minute job turning into a five-hour job or a five-hour job turning into a five-minute job because when you get there, you can't do the work because they've called you for a green pool but have failed to tell you that the pump's not working and you don't have one on board. So all of those lovely things. Like, how does ChatGPT know that, or not ChatGPT, but the scheduling system know that somebody needs a media change and that it takes two hours to do a media change on a filter? It doesn't. So again, that's more information that you've got to take out of your head and put into the system to make it work for you.

SPEAKER_04 35:13

Yeah, it's probably not something I would like myself, you know, the clients being able to dictate my schedule.

unknown 35:21

No.

SPEAKER_04 35:22

I think it would always work if you were, you know, just throwing it out there, maybe a hairdresser, for instance, you know, if they're just coming in for a quick, you know, short back inside, a guy coming in, then yeah, you can you can probably do that. But yeah, as you said, you don't you don't know how long the job's gonna take at the end of the day, especially if you've never been to that site before.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

No, that's exactly right. It's not like you're booking um a table at a restaurant or a motel room, or or a haircut, or an appointment with a chiropractor, or whatever it is. All of those things can have a set allocated time. Sound work it's really hard to do that. It's really hard to do it. You could put a ballpark on it. Let's say that a standard surfa service should take 45 minutes. You could put that in. But the thing is, the customer books in for a 45 minute service and you get there and the pool's green, or it me it's filthy dirty with leaf litter. And it's gonna take you an hour just to vacuum the sucker, let alone do the chemicals and do all the equipment servicing and that that you've got to do as well. So that's wherein lies the problem because I did actually have my web guy when he was doing the website for our business, when we have the pool as far as service business and shop, he wanted me to go down that route. And this was, I'd say, 10 years ago, before AI really came. Well, AI didn't even exist back then. So, but scheduling was available, and he wanted me to go down that route. And I just said, I just can't do it. People can place their booking over on online with me, they can specify which days they prefer or their limitation of hours, absolutely. But then I need to look at the schedule, see which technician it's suited for, because let's face it, how if you've got a team of six technicians, how does the AI know who to schedule it with? Which technician is most suited to that job? Again, maybe it has the ability to be able to do that if you put that information into it. But there's a lot of work that goes into putting that information in and then keeping it current and keeping it up to date. So, yeah, I'm still, yeah, I can see lots of benefits, I can see lots of work involved in it. But I suppose one good thing is, and I talk to my again, my coaching clients about this all the time, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. If you do something one, if you find that you're doing something over and over again, is there a procedure or a process that you can put into place that simplifies it so somebody else can do it and it's not always your job? And it's the same with AI. If we put all that information in, if we invest the time to make it smart, to give it the intelligence that it needs, intelligence that it needs to make those decisions, will it then help us in the long run and free yourself?

SPEAKER_04 38:28

Will we ever not be continued?

SPEAKER_02 38:30

Be continued. I will keep everybody up to date as I'm learning more and share the little tidbits and information along the way. But if anything that I have said today interests anyone and they want to talk to me more or further about my coaching services, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can reach me at thepoolshopcoach.com.au is my website. You can book a a schedule a time to chat with me. You can do your free DIY clarity check. There is also a more um extensive clarity check that you can jump on it and do as well with us for a small fee. But yeah, hopefully there's some information in amongst all of today's episode that people take a bit of information away from and maybe spark their interest a little bit with AI. I don't believe that AI will replace phone contact. I think people are really looking for that personal connection. Personal connection is a big thing now.

SPEAKER_03 39:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:37

People are very dubious about what they're seeing on Facebook and Instagram and social media. Is it AI? Is it not? We can't open our phones without seeing it these days. And now you go, is that real? Like seriously, is that real? And so I I do not believe for a second that AI will replace human contact, face-to-face contact, obviously, but even over-the-phone contact, it's it's really valuable. And so I do know that there was a bit of a chat on uh for I think it was 14 PSI group on Facebook that somebody was interested in in getting an AI assistant. I would say if you still want to keep that personal connection and and not have people hang off on your AI assistant, look at a VA. A VA is a real person, a virtual assistant. They are a real person, they can do the work of receptionists, they can do data entry, they can schedule jobs, you can give them information and um a flowchart and processes that they can follow to get the right information from your clients when they actually ring up to make a booking. And that can lighten your load. So don't be afraid of looking at a VA. I did mention to somebody that I know VA services that charge you a monthly retainer, I think, and then within that you get so many calls for free that they answer. Then over that you pay per call. I don't see anything wrong with that because I actually see that as a user-payed system. I think that's a win-win. If you're not busy, if the calls aren't coming in, you're not paying for a service that's sitting there twiddling their thumbs. But anyway, we got off the AI topic there, but look at BA's if you're worried about AI, but still looking for a way to lighten your mode. So again, thank you for listening. Thank you for joining me, Shane, as always. And if you have any questions, any topics, or anything you would like us to talk about, please drop us a line at talkingpools at gmail.com. And Rudy will share those emails with us or any other appropriate podcast hosts that he deals appropriate to answer your questions. Until next week, we thank you for your time. We hope you have a great week ahead, and we will see you same bat time, same bat channel next Monday. Thanks for listening.